1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and system of document management, and in particular, it relates to the application of barcode, such as two-dimensional barcode, in document management.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many electronic document management systems store metadata about the documents. For example, Microsoft® Windows stores information about a document including the date and time the document was created, modified and accessed, location, size, title, subject, author, category, keywords, comments, etc. Some server-based document management systems, often used by large organizations to allow multiple members of the organization to create, modify and access documents on the server, store more extensive metadata about each document such as access history (a record of the creation, modification, viewing, copying, printing and/or scanning of the document by any user and the date and time of such actions), access control information, document retention policy information, category, the organization or project to which each document belong, routing information, etc. The type of metadata stored by a document management system can often be tailored to the need of the organization deploying the system. The document management system uses the metadata to organize documents and aid in document retrieval by users.
When documents are printed, however, most metadata is typically not retained in the printed document. Some server-based document management system will include a unique document number in the footer (or elsewhere) of the printed document. Microsoft® Word also allows the user to include certain metadata in the printed document (e.g. by inserting field codes). The printed metadata will typically be printed as text strings. The amount of metadata that can be printed with the document is limited as a practical matter.
Barcode has been used on printed documents for various purposes. For example, U.S. patent documents have barcode printed on the front page.